Welcome to the Vancouver Lexicon. Its purpose is to pin down the patois of the City of Vancouver by recording its toponyms, nicknames, slang terms, personalities, places, and other Van-centric things. Full A-Z here.

Riverview | institution, historical | A fabled mental health facility in Coquitlam that opened in 1913 and last operated under the governance of BC Mental Health & Addiction Services until its closure some 99 years later in the summer of 2012. It has since seen a lot of action as a film set, drawing such productions as Supernatural, Riverdale, Happy Gilmore, The X-Files and Deadpool 2, among many others. Patient occupancy peaked at the hospital in the mid-50s, when it reached over 4,300. It’s often said that the severity and visibility of Vancouver’s mental health and addiction crises were multiplied when in the 1980s the provincial government began selling off parts of the facility to developers and moved more patients into regional care facilities, the popular belief being that it unloaded “a bunch of crazies on our streets”. A new, 105-bed facility – The Red Fish Healing Centre for Mental Health and Addiction – is currently under construction on the property. It is set to open at some point in 2021.

Usage: “A reopened Riverview might be a better place than the Downtown Eastside for people to get the help they need…”